Quantifying repressive acts: explanation and challenges of the documentary archive of historical memory in Navarre

Abstract

This document presents the historiographical and methodological foundations of the database of the Documentary Archive of Historical Memory in Navarre, which was developed in the Public University of Navarre following a commission from the Parliament and Government of Navarre. For this purpose a database was elaborated on the Francoist repression with the aim of including the great variety of repressive practices that historiography has identified. This database can be swiftly and easily consulted by the different social, institutional and academic agents. In the first place, the present document provides an assessment of the publication in several autonomous communities in recent years of different online databases on the victims of the civil war and the Francoist repression. Next, it introduces the unit of analysis of our database, “repressive acts”, which it inserts in the historiographical context of the Francoist repression and studies on violence. In the third section, a description is given of the different repressive categories and subcategories in which the repressive acts are framed. Finally, it presents some technical characteristics of the database’s internal organization and software.